


friends to hold you up

by ChevreJaune



Series: the rose potter files [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Female Harry Potter, Friendship, Gen, Hogwarts Second Year, Rumors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 22:29:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12662739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChevreJaune/pseuds/ChevreJaune
Summary: Rose's mood plummets further. ‘Ginny is probably horrified she had to share a room with evil me this summer.’‘Now that can’t be true,’ Ron protests, shaking his head instantly. ‘With the way she kept yapping my ears off about you all summer – bloody hell, make that all my life, she’d probably join you if you were the heir of Slytherin.’ He frowns. ‘Maybe she’s avoiding you till she feels worthy of being your second-in-command. You have to tell her the spot’s taken, Rose.’‘You’d be my second-in-command?’Ron nods. ‘Played the twins for it last week.’





	friends to hold you up

 

 

**from halloween to easter(ish)– a glimpse at second year**

 

 

At age twelve, Rose Potter knows a thing or three about unfairness.

If you asked her cousin Dudley, he’d tell you a lot about the unfairness _he_ routinely suffers from. Not getting the newest video game before his friends: unfair. Not getting a third helping of tart: also unfair. Not getting to be class president, his father assures him, is unfair. Not getting to be the boyfriend of the cutest girl in the class is so very unfair – and absurd, too, Aunt Petunia has added, multiple times.

Dudley feels the world owes him these things and many others beside – and how can he not after a lifetime of being told by his parents that the world is his for the taking?

His concept of unfairness is all sorts of precious, in a really odious and irritating way.

The kind of unfairness Rose is intimately familiar with is a whole other beast: it is the unfairness of being treated differently than everybody else, for things she has no control over. Of feeling helpless and worthless, overlooked and underappreciated. The Dursleys have barely ever tolerated her (because of magic, she now knows) and the Wizarding World has bathed her in gratitude for a night she has no tangible memory of.

She deserves neither the love of strangers nor the contempt of her blood family, but she has dealt with it.  

She has soldiered on and her efforts have granted her _friends_.

 

 

The support of her friends becomes invaluable after Lockhart’s stupid duelling club.

It’s ridiculous. A girl speaks to _one_ tiny snake and it makes her the local pariah. Worse: suddenly, she’s an unstable psychopath and a bigoted arsehole.

‘It’s not like I want to be able to understand snake,’ she mutters unhappily, wrapping her fluffy blanket tighter around herself. ‘I would be much happier being able to chat with Hedwig, truly, Hermione.’

Hermione rubs her elbow consolingly. ‘We’ll find out who’s behind this.’ She glares at the other girls in their dormitory. ‘I cannot believe that anyone with half a brain would believe you capable of going around petrifying students!’

Parvati and Lavender, who have been ignoring the dejected Girl-who-Lived since her duel with Malfoy… keep doing that. They forcefully start a conversation between the both of them to avoid Hermione’s venomous eyes.

Alice Runcorn, though Hermione hasn't aimed any comment her way, pipes up. ‘I don’t think Rose had anything to do with the attacks.’

Rose looks at the ginger-haired girl with a hopeful smile. ‘You don’t?’

‘Why should I? You are not a mean creature. Many animals and beasts are misunderstood. Snakes often belong in this category,’ Alice explains in a soft voice, ‘and I do think perhaps you belong amidst that group, too.’

Hermione gives the reclusive girl a grateful smile and Rose feels her heart soar in her throat. Misunderstood little girl – it is such a cliché, but it’s better than any label she’s been given throughout her childhood. Soon, people will realize the incident at the duelling club is nothing but a misunderstanding. They’d clear that up, and then they’d tackle the whole heir of Slytherin mess. Feeling buoyed, Rose Potter wishes everyone a good night and falls asleep.

 

 

When she goes to breakfast the next day, the rumour has already propagated. It is on everyone’s lips: even the Girl-who-Lived’s dormmate, the cute and shy ginger who barely ever speaks a word has claimed that _Rose Potter belongs with snakes_.

Obviously, if someone who sleeps within a few meters of the Parselmouth says it, that someone must be on to something.

As far as misunderstandings go, this one makes Rose Potter want to dip her head into a Living Dead draught. By the time Justin and Nick get petrified, the whole student population has observed how foul her mood can get and has come to the conclusion that, if she isn’t going to hide her intentions anymore, nobody is safe.

Her protests of not being so petty as to attack Finch-Fletchey for being an arse falls on deaf ears, as does her vehement assurances that she actually _likes_ Nearly-Headless Nick.

 

 

In a matter of hours, Rose Potter has reacquainted herself with disdainful sneers and suspicious glances so well that it feels like she’s never left Privet Drive, never left her tiny cupboard under the stairs.

Luckily, she has plenty to distract herself with at Hogwarts. Flying, studying, playing cards or getting into the innate debates raging between the Weasley twins and Percy; her extracurricular activities occupy most of her free time.

She had hoped to get to know the youngest Weasley better – they had gotten along famously during the last month of the summer – but Ginny bolts whenever Rose comes near. The implicit (and repetitive) rejection smarts more than Rose admits.

Ron has no idea what’s up with his baby sister. ‘She’s gone mental,’ he repeats for the hundredth time, ‘I’m telling you, she swears up and down to everyone who is giving you the stink eye that you’re too brave and noble and nice to do something sneaky and evil like that. I’ve no clue why she clams up when you’re around.’

‘She can’t even look at me, Ron,’ Rose murmurs in defeat.

Ron shrugs, at a loss.

Rose isn’t done. Her mood plummets further at a passing thought. ‘Ginny is probably horrified she had to share a room with evil me.’

‘Now that can’t be true,’ Ron protests at once, shaking his head with much energy. ‘With the way she kept yapping my ears off about you all summer – bloody hell, make that _all my life_ , she’d probably join you if you were the heir of Slytherin.’ He frowns. ‘Maybe she’s avoiding you till she feels worthy of being your second-in-command. You have to tell her the spot’s taken, Rose.’

The thought – or the sincerity of it, rather – does diminish her distress a tad.

‘You’d be my second-in-command?’

Ron nods. ‘Played the twins for it last week.’

Rose grins back at him, though it falters when she catches sight of a few Hufflepuffs staring at them and whispering. She groans, lets her shoulders slump.

‘They’ll tell everyone I’m planning on becoming the next Dark Lady or something just as dumb.’ 

‘Cheer up, mate,’ Ron offers, ‘it’s almost the end of the term and then we can catch Malfoy at it. Maybe he’ll get booted out. That’d be glorious, wouldn’t it?’

Rose smiles. She sometimes has trouble believing that the first friend she stumbled upon could turn out to be the best friend she possibly could’ve had. Luck doesn’t even begin to cover it. ‘Nothing I’d want more for Christmas.’

 

 

‘I like Lockhart,’ Rose declares absent-mindedly on a gloomy midday.

Ron looks betrayed.

‘It’s just. He never once looked at me suspiciously, you know.’ She sighs. Her face isn’t soft and mushy and wistful, but it’s still alarming. ‘He gave a speech to a few Hufflepuffs earlier.’

Ron opens his mouth, tries to think of something to say to nip that one in the bud.

Honestly, rumors are bad enough when they make Rose sad – now they have to go and mess with her brain? And they are so close to finishing the potion too.

The potion.

It's probably the fumes going to Rose’s head. Ron goes to crack open a window. It clears the fog in _his_ mind, so he can only hope it works on Rose too. Hermione would have scolded them for forgetting proper aeration. She would also have scolded them for forgetting to prepare their working environment up to decent safety standards.

She's even made them a _checklist_. It's crumpled in Ron’s pocket.

He waits for Rose to get a few breaths of fresher air before saying, ‘Better leave off fancying Lockhart, for now. We'd still manage to be friends, I think, but... Not sure they know a cure for that sort of thing.’

He’d take Rose petrifying innocent people over her fancying Lockhart any day, besides.

 

 

She takes his counsel into advisement and informs him so on their way to Charms.

‘Yeah, no. Lockhart is a world-class pompous git. Don’t know what I was thinking.’

Ron grins and claps her on the shoulder.

This is why he likes Rose best.

 

 

Sadly, while they do succeed in finishing the Polyjuice Potion for Christmas, they fail to weasel anything incriminating out of Malfoy. All they gain from the month of brewing in a damp haunted bathroom is a set of enduring whiskers for Hermione and the strange knowledge of how it feels to be a boy for Rose. She had insisted – probably for the better, seeing as she hadn’t ended up with a tail or cat ears.

Still. It had felt weird. There had been… parts of Goyle… that had felt very, very wrong to have in her feminine underwear. Ron had looked fascinated when she had tried to imitate the goon’s heavy gait, though, and greatly amused when she hadn't bothered.

‘I feel like I’ve just lost a stone,’ muses Ron when the potion wears off. He looks down at himself and the way Crabbe’s robes seemed so large on his normal body.

The effect is even more striking on Rose. She pulls a face. ‘I’m never wearing that boy’s skin again, that’s for sure. His smell cannot be natural. I cannot believe I made myself smell like that for nothing.’

‘Turning into Millicent has to be worse if Hermione was scared to get out. Reckon she has ugly rashes?’

‘I’d prefer not to imagine what Slytherins have going in their sensitive places. Goyle felt itchy enough as is.’

‘Maybe Hermione’ll tell us what’s wrong with Millicent once she turns back. We can laugh about it, won’t have been for nothing then.’

Rose snorts. ‘And we can send the poor girl a cream or something. Spread the Christmas cheer.’

‘So long as nothing else spreads,’ Ron agrees wisely.

The two friends exchange a look and burst out laughing.

 

 

Only instead of having her own disturbing account of being a female Slytherin, Hermione is stuck with fur and a tail. She’s kind of cute like that, but when Rose mentions it, her friend only looks more miserable. It’s confusing. If Lavender and Parvati were still talking to her, Rose could ask them about it.

Worse, with Hermione laid up in the hospital wing for weeks, more and more students are turning livid when they cross Rose in the halls. Since their holiday mission was to clear her name and bring the real culprit to light, it is fair to say the Polyjuice expedition ended up being a total fiasco.

On the upside, Ginny stops running away like Rose is deathly contagious and even starts trading greetings. Her cheeks are rosy and her eyes bright, and the change is so startling that all the Weasley wonder how they didn’t notice how upset their sister was. None of the brothers know for sure what prompted all the stark mood swings, but they are glad to witness their sibling acting like herself again. The twins make a toast, and Percy joins in, though his smile is restrained and there is a spark of anxiety when he glances at his baby sister.

The rest of the school is only too happy to compensate for Ginny’s sudden fearlessness.

‘What happened to innocent until proven guilty?’ grumbles Rose as yet another spooked first-year runs away from her. A week before, they had still been just inching away.  

 ‘That only works for avoiding detentions after risky pranks,’ says one of the nearby Weasley twins with a long suffering sigh.

Rose huffs. ‘It should work always. That’s the point of it.’

‘Bite your tongue, young lady,’ exclaims the other twin. ‘If wizards and witches required proof, they might not have believed the story of the girl-who-lived-to-vanquish-the-dark-lord! Indeed, they might have gone on cowering in their homes, refusing to believe the monster could be dead without seeing the body!’

 _As they should have_ , Rose thinks emphatically, a hand automatically rubbing at her scar. Instead of voicing that, she asks the more pressing question. ‘There was no body?’

‘None at all! Just a set of smelly robes crisply burnt around the edges.’

‘How did they know, then?’

‘Figured the bastard would never live to allow words of his defeat to a baby spread, I reckon,’ offers the twin to her right, looking very unconcerned about the whole ordeal.

The twin to her left shakes his head. ‘The Imperius curses he personally placed broke that night. His followers went berserk trying to find him when they couldn’t feel him through whatever sex-bond he had them tied with.’

‘Okay, okay, I get it,’ Rose mutters, shifting on her seat uncomfortably. The twins were looming very close. ‘People will believe anything, wizards especially and without prompting.’

‘Have to when you can change reality with a wave of a wand,’ philosophizes the twin she was beginning to think might be George. George was always a tad more thoughtful than his other half.

‘Still shouldn’t upset our heiress so,’ says the other boy with a glint in his eye. ‘Perhaps you’d like us to deal a bit of mayhem in your honour? Retribution, if you will?’

And yeah, that was definitely Fred Weasley. She notes his canines are slightly more crooked than his brother’s. It’s the only sign she can notice quick enough – maybe when they actually stop moving for a few seconds at a time she might get to count the freckles on their nose, see if they match.

‘Thanks, Fred, but no thanks. I’ll be fine.’

A tiny widening of his eyes and a flash of something pleased tells her all she needs to know. She got it _right_. She’d have to remember, about the teeth.  

‘Woman, you spend a month at our house after we rescue you from your horrible Muggles and you still cannot tell that I’m George?’

Rose shakes her head with a small smile of her own. There is no mistaking the warmth she feels at his heartfelt tone. She giggles a bit, the exhaustion of Quidditch practice and lack of sleep catching up to her. ‘Sure, Fred.’ When she sees both of them staring, she shrugs. ‘I’m a fantastic Seeker, aren’t I? I spot things.’

‘Do you,’ George says. There is no particular intonation to it.

 ‘Well,’ she says, suddenly unsure. It feels like their names, their identities are something… intimate. Why that would be, she doesn’t know, but she tries for a cheeky smile. ‘Don’t worry, just because I can tell you apart doesn’t mean I’ll be picking favourites!’

She believes in fairness, after all.

George is still staring. ‘Your face looks really weird.’

Fred nods, but grins innocently. ‘Favourites? Milady, I accept the challenge for your heart!’

And just likes that, while her face reddens, George is grinning too. ‘Never mind him, he’s still sore he lost to Ron the second-in-command title. Poor fool doesn’t know what he’s taking on. Obviously, I’ll win.’

They’re both grinning wide now, like cats surveying a small and helpless canary. It’s probably payback for her having the audacity to tell them apart.

‘Don’t,’ Rose squeaks.

It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s also the wrong way to say it.

She clears her throat. How did Dudley do threats? He squared his shoulders, didn’t he? She does that, glaring at them menacingly. ‘Don’t. Or I’ll set Slytherin’s monster on you!’

‘Eeeep!’ she hears from behind her.

Of course, a terrified first-year Ravenclaw is standing there. The poor thing drops her books and freezes, looking really torn about whether to waste time picking them up or fleeing at once.

Bloody hell, Rose thinks.

It’s a big thought. It takes up all her headspace, for a moment there.

‘I’ll just go hit my head on a wall a few times,’ Rose says blankly. ‘It’s long overdue, really.’

The Christmas break has only been over five days and Rose already can’t stand people anymore.

 

 

At some point in the following week, Rose thinks she can start to live with the constant suspicion from her peers. It’s not enjoyable, but she did it in Privet Drive, so her skills should carry.

People like something to blame. It makes life simpler and doom less arbitrary. Okay, it hurts that everyone is ready to believe the worst of her, but so what?

And then while she scours the halls under her Invisibility Cloak, just to get a feeling of normalcy for once, she catches Snape glaring down two seventh year Hufflepuffs.

It’s not strange or anything. Glaring at Hufflepuffs is just what Slytherins do.

What comes next is weird.

‘Detentions, the both of you.’

‘For saying Potter is dangerous?’

From the arch of Snape’s eyebrow, it is clear those were not the exact words used. Snape has, with McGonagall, the best “how dare you lie to me” face Rose has ever witnessed. The taller Hufflepuff seems to agree. He gulps.

Snape smiles. It is not kind. ‘I see it as a service to the school. With any hope, your sudden bout of idiocy will desist before its contagion spreads.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the shorter one chimes, elbowing his friend before a protest can be uttered.

Protests do not earn any favours with Severus Snape. Everyone knows that.

But this eagerness to comply also draws a disgusted grimace.

It’s fascinating and all so strange.

Rose remembers to breathe as Snape nods and swoops away. She thinks he hears her, because his eyes search for a source and his scowl deepens when he finds none.

He is muttering about cloaks and expulsions when he walks past her.

 _Whatever_ , Rose thinks, still stunned but righteous. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She just wanted to get to the library without feeling like a leper.

 

 

So.

The school hates her. Even her House is being stupid and hurtful.

And the only non-Gryffindors who realize that her being the Heiress is utter tosh are Snape and Lockhart.

It’s enough to mess with anyone’s head. She never tells Ron about Snape – he got loopy enough when she had a momentary lapse of judgment and admitted to being touched by Lockhart’s faith in her.

Telling him about the Snape thing would just be cruel.

Besides, she’s already justified it as Snape using any excuse to make students scrub his gooey potions cabinet.

(Still.

Snape and Lockhart. Snape. And Lockhart.

Really, it’s all sorts of depressing and wrong and utterly unfair. But mostly wrong. And weird and strange and totally unfair. )

At least, Hermione’s face has turned hairless a few days ago – it’s only a matter of time before she comes back to class and can help Rose and Ron work out who exactly is getting their rocks off turning Muggleborns, cats and ghosts to stone-ish. _Then_ the twins could unleash mayhem on the guilty party.

She’d roast marshmallows. It would be a well-earned, _fair_ reward.

 

 

As January comes to a term, Lockhart corners Rose to tell him about his very shortly upcoming birthday.

Or at least, that’s what she thinks he wants to tell her. He’s going on and on about his birth being a blessing for the British witches and how her and her comrades were surely wanting to throw him a surprise birthday party and of course her friend Miss Granger would have spotted all the hints about what constitutes a perfect party for Gilderoy Lockhart in his biography, Magical Me! but that he felt that he should still discuss it with Rose, who knew what it was like to have high expectations as a fellow celebrity…

Honestly, he looks like he’s expecting something specific from her, but she can’t for the life of her figure out what. She does roll her eyes when he says “fellow celebrity” though –

And spots a young girl walking to class.

On the ceiling. Upside down.

The girl’s blond braids are dangling, but her robes aren’t. Rose spots blue ribbons tied at the young – Ravenclaw, she sees the embroidery – ankles.

She tries not to stare – both because, as she personally hates being stared at, she avoids doing it to others, and because she doesn’t want Lockhart to spot the quirky girl – but her eyes keep drifting up. If the girl has elected to walk to class upside down as a way to avoid an encounter with the scary heiress of Slytherin, she’d have to give her points for style. It’d be the first sign of original thinking Rose would catch from a Ravenclaw, all ages confounded.

As Lockhart still waxes poetry about how magnificent his birthday cake ought to be, there comes a point where the ceiling-walking girl spots Rose, too, and their eyes meet.

Rose expects a grimace or a sign of terror.

Instead, the short girl beams and waves her hello.

Rose’s smile stays until nighttime.

 

 

She asks around after that, but ‘blonde Ravenclaw’ is too vague for proper identification to occur.

She’d like the tiny slip of a girl as a friend, she thinks. Her life could use a bit of fun whimsy, she tells Myrtle, who rolls her eyes at her.

‘What,’ Rose says, defensive, ‘it’s a nice thought. It helps deals with everything.’

‘I bet your blonde tart is just like all those other girls who throw things at me,’ Myrtle bites out, crossing her arms.

She isn’t, Rose wants to protest, but well. She doesn’t know that. Instead, she frowns. ‘Who throws stuff at you?’

‘Nasty girls who are so proud that they’re alive,’ Myrtle spits. ‘Like it’s an achievement! I’d like to see them in a century or two and see how proud and mean they’ll be then. Except I won’t, because they’ll _finally_ be gone and I’ll still be here!’

‘What did they throw at you, then?’ Rose asks, because the only thing to do with Myrtle is to just ignore all the bitterness and nastiness and whining and just… take whatever small amount of nice or useful personality there is left.

Myrtle clucks. ‘Some boring old diary.’

 

 

When the diary tells her he knows the real culprit behind the petrifications, Rose feels her heartbeat quicken. This could be _it_. An old diary could be the key to proving her innocence.

Tell me, she asks, and the diary shows her instead.

Her pulse kicks up a notch further when she sees Tom Riddle. Tom smiles like he knows exactly what she’s feeling. The arrogance it implies should not be attractive, and yet Rose can’t bring herself to think ill of this charming boy.

Except this charming boy leads her to Hagrid and when she watches the events of the past unfold, her blood turns to ice.

‘His arrest meant everyone’s freedom,’ Tom tells her modestly as the scene ends. ‘It can be yours, too, now.’

She smiles thinly. Her limbs shake. He spots that, too. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, and the diary draws her out of its papery confine.

When she’s back on her bed, she glares at the diary who so easily broke her peace of mind. She hadn’t realized she still possessed some of it, but… she’d rather be thought guilty by everyone else than to have to bring her mind around the fact that big, lovable Hagrid could be bad.

He _couldn’t_. He brought her to this world. He made the Dursleys a bit nicer. He gave her Hedwig, and Hedwig was nice, so Hagrid couldn’t be _bad_.

He’d given her a wonderful album of pictures and he’d told her James Potter used to call her ‘princess’.

Her hands are still shaking and she understands why whoever had this diary before felt the urge to throw it in a toilet.

‘Liar,’ she spits at the innocent looking item and shoves it in her trunk, amid her smelly socks.

It figures her first crush would be a terribly stupidly mistaken do-gooder.

 

 

She still tells her friends, hoping they’d confirm it was utter nonsense and make her feel better.

‘He did have a dragon,’ Hermione says instead of the lines Rose had thought up for her.

‘And a dragon isn’t as bad as an acromantula,’ Ron says, looking green.

It’s also not what Rose hoped for, but it is honest to character. She sighs. ‘Let’s go and see him, yeah? We can sort it out there.’

 

 

Things go from bad to worse and are very much _not_ sorted.

She’d say that Dumbledore and Hagrid sent away is the very worst thing that could happen in their situation.

 

 

Then, they get even worse. Of course. Of course she _jinxed_ it.

Maybe she’s as terrible a person as the whole castle thinks her to be.

Easter happens. Hermione is petrified. Ron turns white, his freckles stark on his cheeks, and Rose keeps saying no, no, there has to be a mistake because Hermione is too smart for Slytherin’s monster but they’re being brought to the infirmary and Hermione is there, too real for denial, and

Rose cries when she touches Hermione’s hand with her fingertips because _it’s so cold and rigid_ –

 

 

The rumors stop the same day. Everyone apologizes for having doubted Rose Potter unfairly. Too many girls want to hug her.

She wants to hug no one. She lets herself be hugged anyway.

If this is what fair is like, it sucks. If this is what fair is like, she’d rather be despised and feared and still have Hermione. It was depressing but depressing is better than this.

This is – devastating. The absence. The silence. It feels like someone tore her apart and stitched her back together but forgot the most important parts.

With Ron, they start to use the phrase, “When Hermione wakes up” to begin a lot of their sentences. It’s a comfort. It makes the horrible situation feel like all of it is just another mishap, like when they were waiting for her to be un-felined and how they had laughed when she had been but still craved fish and still sported a tuft of hair on her neck.

Rose looks forward to a time when all this might become funny. She doesn’t think it ever will – even the twins are somber – but she has nothing better to go on.

 

 

One morning she hears a foul mouthed Ravenclaw say, ‘That Potter girl probably still is the psycho behind all this. Targeted her best friend so no one would suspect her anymore. Devious but quite cliché.’

She can’t help it.

She walks forward and punches him.

It earns her detention, but she regrets nothing. Her detention was fair. So was her punch.

When she tells Ron, his eyes go first very round, then very hard.

 

 

He walks up to the bruised boy the next day.

‘You’re daft, aren’t you,’ Ron says, sounding almost sorry for the Ravenclaw.

Before the idiot can respond, Ron kicks the boy’s shin as Professor McGonagall passes by.

It’s not like he hadn’t seen her.

‘Why, Mister Weasley, I am appalled!’ the woman scolds, and she sounds very convincing, too.

When she marches him into Rose’s detention, he shrugs his free shoulder at his friend. ‘I’m your second-in-command this year, aren’t I? Won it fair and square, but I reckon I can _earn_ it too.’

Rose smiles at him, bemused but fond. ‘You’re quite daft, aren’t you?’

He grins and bumps his shoulder to hers as he sits. Rose spots a tiny quirk of the lips on McGonagall’s stern face as the woman turns to leave. Rose bumps Ron back, her silent thank you.

Ron smiles at her ruefully. ‘I wanted a turn before the twins get to do their thing.’

Rose can’t help it. She giggles.

For the first time since Hermione’s petrification, she feels a spark of warmth.

‘Here’s to looking forward,’ she says, passing him a bag of toad’s heart and a pestle.

He slips them in his mortar without looking. ‘Here’s to that.’

They set to smashing the icky hearts in companionable silence.

 

 

 


End file.
